Veronika Kudermetova is the first finalist at the WTA 500 Toray Pan Pacific Open Tennis after defeating her compatriot Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in a three-set battle that lasted almost three and a half hours.
The first set started equally with both players winning their serve games. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova made the first break in the 6th game, to lead by 4:2, but her opponent returned it immediately and subsequently equalized to 4:4. In the 10th game of the set, Veronika Kudermetova gave five break/set points to her opponent, but succeeded to save all of them and again equalized to 5:5 and after both winning their next serve games, moved the set into a tiebreak. Veronika Kudermetova missed two set points in the tiebreak, but finally succeeded to win it by 8-6, closing the set in her favor.
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova succeeded to take a lead in the second set by 3:1 after a break and was running convincingly to win it, but Veronika Kudermetova succeeded to equalize to 4:4, returning the break. Thus, the set entered again into a tiebreak, in which Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova took the initiative from the very beginning and won it without any doubt, equalizing the score.
The third set started equally with both winning easily their serve games without giving a breakpoint. However, Veronika Kudermetova first recorded a break to take a lead of 4:3 and after that defended it to extend her advance to 5:3. In the 9th game, she received two match points at 15-40, and although her opponent saved them she finally succeeded to break her opponent again from the 5th matchpoint and won the set.
Thus, the 8th-seeded Veronika Kudermetova won the match by 2-1 (7:6, 6:7, 6:3).
In the final of the WTA 500 Toray Pan Pacific Open Tennis, she will face the winner between the 4th-seeded Maria Sakkari (Greece) and the 2nd-seeded Jessica Pegula (USA).
